Wednesday, November 28, 2012

While I was marching against the
fur industry last Friday, I was told to “get a life” by a passerby with several
big Macy’s bags, just as I have been for about the past fifteen years. Some
years they have Bed, Bath and Beyond bags, other times bright bags from
American Girl, occasionally H & M or Bloomingdale’s, often a clashing mix
of bags from different places on both arms. What I think I am to infer from
this casual comment from this stranger (and all the ones before him) is that I, fully
ambulatory and not on the hunt for brains, nonetheless lack key inner qualities
that constitute what Mr. Macy’s would consider a life. People have also said
this to me when I was protesting wars, and when I have spoken out against
violence in general, and it’s always pretty predictable: a muttered comment as
someone rushes past, meant to be heard but not meant to be discussed.

It’s a shame that they always
hurry by so quickly, though, because it never ceases to make me wonder: what is
a life? What does it mean to be alive? Most important perhaps: how does someone
“get” a life if he or she is not in possession of it? I figured that those able
to identify those without one must certainly have one, so I decided to look to them to find examples of how we
can know that someone has a life.

I was expecting it to be more complicated but I found a really simple and clear answer.

People with lives shop, especially on Black Friday.

Apparently getting
statisticians at the National Retail Federation to rock back and forth on their
heels with delight by pushing, elbowing and stampeding to grab DVD players,
flat-screen TVs, tablets, towels and sweatshirts is confirmation that one is in
compliance with life-having. Individuals imbued with the powers of animation
offer ample evidence of their aliveness by driving in circles around parking
lots, stalking exits for shopping carts, shouting directives at family members
with the ferocity of an especially cranky General Patton, and basically
pummeling or trampling anyone who happens to get between them and a toaster
oven at a deep discount.

More cautious
life-possessors shop at places with generous points of entry. The real rogues
go to the stores with the individual doors.

How do you know that you
are alive? Your adrenaline hormone has been released, prompting muscular and
circulatory action.

Just try to stand in a
line in the middle of the night facing a shopping emporium if you’re not alive.
I’d bet that you couldn’t do it.

Being alive means that you
participate in shared experiences with others of your species.

It also means that despite
being a driven, eyes-on-the-prize kind of person, you are smart enough to know when to combine resources
for mutual benefit.

One’s ability to push and point
a shopping cart toward a particular destination is further evidence of possessing
life-having properties.

If you don’t feel that
fire in the belly to get what should be yours – and to push, punch, elbow and
jab if necessary to get your hands on it – that should be a red flag, alerting you to look into whether or not you
were endowed with a life.

You could ask yourself the
following questions:

Do you care about others,
even when how they are treated has no real bearing on you personally? You need to get a life.

Do you speak out against
cruelty and injustice, even if your views are unpopular and unwelcome? You need to get a life.

Do your core values inform
your actions despite how poorly you fit in with mainstream society? You need to get a life.

Hot damn, I think I have
my answer.

Were the people I
encountered necessarily correct in saying that I need to get a life? I don’t know, but if I had a dollar for each
time someone told me that I needed one because I care about others,
I might have the money together to actually purchase one at Best Buy. (Which department
do you think it’d be in?) At the very least, I could stand in a giant crowd of
agitated, aggressive people and give it my best try.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

It’s
that time of year again. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about family, abundance
and giving thanks for the harvest and yet a certain fringe group of people
insist upon making it all about themselves and their own selfish agenda year
after year. They practically ruin the holiday, too, with the rest of us having
to be careful to not upset them.

I’m
talking about the omnivores, of course.

Once
again, they will show up at your beautiful vegan Thanksgiving meal and expect
to be fed. They are so presumptuous, too: it’s as though they expect their hosts to
bend over backwards, catering to their unreasonable, finicky and downright
bizarre dietary whims. Most of what they eat seems to be the stuff of fiction. I
can’t even keep up with what they do or do not consider edible. Pigs? Cows?
Chickens? Lizards? Cardinals? I have no idea. So many weird things that they
eat, such peculiar habits they maintain. Omnivorism is like a cult. It’s as if they’ll
eat anything.

They
will show up, too, because inevitably your niece or your neighbor or your son
will know an omnivore who is all alone on Thanksgiving and you will open your
home to him or her because you are a generous person. It’s always a disaster,
though. The omnivores are so conspicuous whether they try to draw attention to
themselves or not, making everyone uncomfortable with their mere presence. We just
want to enjoy our delicious meal in peace and yet there they will be, reminding
us of all those unappetizing things that we don’t want to think about,
especially at Thanksgiving.

Can’t
they just give it up? Gah! So strident.

No,
instead of being like everyone else, they’ve got to make it all about them and
their extreme lifestyle. I swear, half of them do it just to get attention. To
keep the peace, though, we have to just deal with it. What upsets me, though,
is that the omnivores act like their weird habits are more important than
my traditions. Having a vegan Thanksgiving is a beloved custom of mine. I really
don’t care if honoring my family’s traditions is offensive to others but they
insist that their ridiculous habits also be respected. Isn’t that unreasonable?
And they seem to want the rest of us to feel guilty that they’re in the
minority. How is that my problem? Next thing you know, they’re going to want
their own Thanksgiving parade or something because la dee dah, they are just so special and unique.

My
advice to you? Just ignore them. Let them keep living in their little fantasy
world. If they try to engage you in a debate, change the subject. It’s their
fault that they have chosen to be so removed from reality but you still don’t
want their bizarre lifestyle to take over your lovely event. Take control.
Smile and ask them to please pass the sweet potatoes.

You
don’t deserve to have your holiday ruined because of an omnivore at your
Thanksgiving table. Enough is enough.

Friday, November 2, 2012

“The
moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth
that is in us, and from the motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the
divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.” Elizabeth
Cady Stanton

I was born a feminist. I’m not sure where
it came from – perhaps my dynamo of a grandmother, confident to the core – but growing
up, I never thought that I was anything but a complete equal to everyone else. I was
a natural feminist and when I learned that there were was a real need for it -
that there were those who believed in arbitrary, illogical and repressive hierarchies
- the fire within me to correct injustices was found its fuel source. When I
saw kids throw rocks at squirrels, heard people make bigoted remarks, witnessed
others being treated unfairly, my hands would involuntarily ball up into tight
little fists. Even if I wanted to keep quiet, to not attract the ire of that
bully down the block who threw rocks at the squirrels or the loudmouth at the
bar years later, I physically couldn’t do it. It’d be like asking a volcano to
please not explode. My feminism and my passion for equality and fairness were
always fully interwoven and integrated.

Now here is the sad part, the whole falling
out between me and mainstream feminism that left me so disappointed. I will
concede that maybe I’m naïve. It’s quite possible that I’m just out-of-synch with
the world around me. I have come to accept that I am stubbornly idealistic
sometimes. This is all possible.

But…

When I came of age as a feminist in college
the idea of intentionally adopting a patriarchal system of oppression was unthinkable.
This is not to say that I was perfect by a long shot: I have a virtual walk-in
closet chock full of skeletons just accumulated from the Booze Era of my life
that lasted from ages 19 to 26. Even with a mean hangover, though, the idea was
that I was trying to dismantle vicious systems of tyranny, not benefit from
them. The thought of consciously participating in a fundamentally unjust and
violent power structure once I knew about it would have been akin to keeping
slaves simply because I could.

Animal agriculture is a historically and
essentially oppressive one, one that asserts at its very root that “what’s
yours is mine” if you don’t happen to be a human. Your milk, your eggs, your
life. This is an entrenched patriarchal conceit, born of domination, and the
idea that women, feminists at that, would accept this particular status quo is
strange and troubling to me. That they would adopt it and wrap it in the
parlance of quasi-feminist empowerment is especially unsettling. Yet I see
photos of women with weapons standing over dead animals, grinning victoriously. I
read grandiloquent accounts of slaughter, including one in which a woman was
quoted as saying that she felt like “a goddess, an Amazon” after killing a
chicken with her own hands. (Oh, and a knife.) I hear women speaking with
obvious pride about shooting deer, killing the animals they have raised,
taking them apart from limb to limb. Less overtly inspired by bloodlust, I know of
avowed feminists who could “never” give up “their” cheese, who don’t pause to reflect
on the lives of the chickens on the plate in front of them at their favorite
Thai restaurant, who say that they consider their preferences first as a matter
of self-empowerment.

Here is the thing: when feminists are
accepting and embracing the tools of oppression, it’s time to reevaluate
things. Ladies, you have co-opted your own feminist principles and replaced them
with maintaining your comforts instead.

Feminism is a social justice movement, one
that asserts at its core that females are equal to males. No one deserves
violence, injustice, suppression, and inequality simply because she was born
with X and Y chromosomes, just as no Jews deserve persecution just because of the
lineage they were born into or people of color deserve it because they are not
Caucasian. We know this. Why are the animals people exploit and kill – those who
were born to circumstances outside of their own control, just like all others – excluded from the sphere of consideration by otherwise thoughtful, kind,
and progressive people? Because unrestricted access to animals is their right,
damn it, and they will guard this privilege to the finish.

Feminism is about many things and it
differs from interpreter to interpreter. I get that. If feminism implies through word and deed (or is also complicit by the lack thereof) that
some females are more equal than others, though, this crosses into the
troubling mentality that supports slavery and selective, self-serving habits
over moral consistency. When females of different species are forcibly
impregnated and have their babies and milk taken from them in an enforced cycle of pregnancy and birth until they are considered worthless, that is a
crime against them and it is gendered. This is institutionalized, state-sanctioned
violence and exploitation. Wouldn’t a feminist naturally take a stand against
such abuse? Wouldn’t a feminist naturally not aid and abet such heinous
cruelty? Wouldn't a feminist naturally disavow such distinctly unenlightened and unnecessary violence?

I am a feminist because I believe that all
beings were created equal. I am a feminist because I reject the common
practices of patriarchal violence, no matter how culturally ingrained they
are and beneficial they might be to me. I am a vegan because I am a
true blue, proud feminist. We have to be honest to ourselves and honest to each
other: are those of us who believe in social justice going to go the
distance for others or are we just going to remain in our own comfort zone? Are
we going to be fearless as we create this new world order or are we going to accept
business as usual, choosing comfort over challenging ourselves to be true
champions for sovereignty of the body and spirit?

Despite how disappointed I have felt by
other feminists over the years, I am still one in my heart and soul. This won’t
ever change. I am just ready for other feminists to step up to the plate and
take the animals off of it. We have to never let go of a commitment to tenacious
compassion.

We are the ones. The future of the world
rests in the hands of the powerful and fearless vegan feminists.